Seattle councilmember Kshama Sawant speech to Bernie

[Ichingcarpenter]

Seattle councilmember Kshama Sawant joined a star-studded climate panel in New York that included Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben to deliver a barnburner speech that ended with the endorsement of potential 2016 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.





Nobody here will disagree that we can’t rely on the right wing climate change denying Republicans, but neither can we rely on the big business Democrats. Under Obama, there has been a massive expansion not of clean energy, but of fossil fuels, oil drilling in the arctic, of fracking. It’s an expansion that hasn’t been seen in more than a generation. And it’s not just Obama, the political establishment is awash with oil money. If we tone down our demands to appease the Democratic party elite, they will simply use our generosity to further appease their corporate donors.

Only an independent force of the 99 percent, a new party based on workers, young people, environmentalists and labor will be able to fight Wall Street and big business. A party that will struggle and boldly advocate for alternatives to this crisis ridden system. It was great to hear Bernie Sanders tonight—there has been some talk about Bernie running for president in 2016 to provide an alternative to Hillary Clinton (laughter).

I don’t always agree with Bernie, I’ll be honest, especially his recent positions on US foreign policy, but just for a moment—let us imagine the impact of a well known and credible independent left challenger of the stature of Bernie, running as a challenge to the two parties of big business in the 2016 elections. If we had a left wing campaign that refused any corporate cash and called for taxing corporations and the superwealthy to fund a massive green jobs program, an end to corporate welfare, a $15 minimum wage, single payer health care, and a cancellation of student debt.

I would appeal to Bernie to run as an Independent candidate in 2016, not tied to the Democrats and their big business agenda.

http://www.seattleweekly.com/home/954712-129/sawant-urges-bernie-sanders-to-run

[3rdwaydem]

1. Interesting coming from Kshama Sawant considering

that she is an, extremely rich, former MicroSoft employee (well within the one percent) who lives in a giant, multiple-million dollar mansion with an enormous carbon foot print. Her husband still works in the high tech industry and is also rich in his own right. Further, when not showing up to be among her friends at Seattle's Freeway Hall, the Freedom Socialist Party Headquarters, she is fond of high priced designer clothing, made in sweat shops, and other high end luxury goods.

So, is the "One Percent" the enemy or are we making special exceptions for certain resource hogs merely because they say things that we like?

[noiretextatique]

5. her politics are consistently liberal

which is more than i can say for third way dems.

[noiretextatique]

6. her financial disclosure

http://www.seattlemet.com/data/files/2013/10/attachment/133/SawantKshama2013_copy.pdf

not exactly 1%. do you have any evidence to support your claims? i alerted on your post because if you posted this about clinton or obama, the post probably would have been deleted. put up...or shut up.

[Veilex]

8. "she is an, extremely rich..." Uhuh. Riiiiight. Have any proof? Thought not.

Enjoy your stay.

[cascadiance]

12. I find your denigrating her denigrates me as a software engineer as well!

Making around $100k as a software engineer USED to be common for many of us in that profession, and I'll bet she was paid just around that much. The subsequent financial form indicated that she was at the code (D) just under the one for $100k and over. We've been paid good money (sometimes just over $100k) and have good academic credentials to earn that kind of salary when the industry was growing, and in the high cost of living areas like the Bay Area and other parts of the country where tech workers work in any significant numbers, that is NOT a 1% salary by ANY MEANS! Many of us now are having to work many temporary contract jobs now off and on with the H-1B indentured servant programs that reward the REAL 1%ers over engineers like us and has many of us losing all of our savings, that started with the laddering scams that caused the dotcom bomb at the end of the last century that screwed many of us and had us paying alternative minimum tax (on unsold exercised stock options we weren't allowed to sell but which sank after the laddering scamsters did their work before we could sell them) on the same tax forms that we paid tax on unemployment benefits.

Many of us are to the point of blowing away IRAs and 401ks now to survive in this climate and pay RENT (not house payments). As I said, the way you characterize what she used to have as a profession is damn insulting to me. I also work hard to help push causes to help the common person now too, and I can identify a lot with her life experience! Yes we saw what SHOULD have been gateway professions to help people from the middle class climb up the ladder, but which now is being shut off to most Americans and switched to Paris Hiltons and others that only inherit wealth as the ones that have any chance of being reasonably well off in the future without some substantive changes, that both she and I want for everyone.

I think the article that this person has been referring to is the one from Publicola web site on SeattleMet here...

http://www.seattlemet.com/news-and-profiles/publicola/articles/isnt-it-weird-that-october-kshama-2013

Seems like a better name might be "Kochacola" instead of that...

[woo me with science]

32. Beautiful post.

And this is exactly what is happening to other professions, too, under corporatists in both parties.

The goal of the One Percent is to always to siphon money upward. They are systematically turning what used to be well-paying careers into low-paying cookie cutter positions. Teachers turned into TFA robots, doctors turned into technicians. No profession is safe if they can find a way to take control of it and control where the money goes.

[RufusTFirefly]

13. Despite the obvious smear, you get credit for truth in advertising

At least it's clear from your username where you're coming from

[eridani]

18. If you are local, you have no excuse for being ignorant. If you aren't--

--no one really expects you to know jackshit about Seattle politics. Which you clearly don't. For the record, she lives in a brick 2 story house built in 1904, 1840 sq ft, 3 bedrooms and 1 bath. Land assessed at $166,000 and house at $181,000.


She was a software engineer in India, where she married her husband. When they moved to the US, she entered the doctoral program in economics at North Carolina State and got a PhD. She has mostly held part-time adjunct faculty positions with no benefits ever since. Her husband is still at Microsoft and probably takes in $100-$150K a year--affluent, but nowhere near the 1%. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kshama_Sawant

If she ever went to New Freeway Hall, she'd be kicked out. The Freedom Socialists are part of the 15 Now faction who publicly attacked her for compromising on the $15/hour phase-in in order to get the legislation passed. (Yes, it is pretty nice to be living in a place where a socialist officeholder can plausibly be attacked from the left. Thanks for asking.)

Her party is the Socialist Alternative, and they really are something new under the sun in Seattle. They talk to voters, where most socialist factions talk only to each other about who has the really really truly correct interpretation of Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, etc. IMO actually winning is possible for third parties only in urban centers, university towns, or rural areas colonized by old hipples. Should they ever get a city council member elected in Kent, SeaTac or Federal Way, I'd be utterly astonished.

Don't know about designer clothes, but Seattle is not a very high-fashion town. As they say, men's wear is a flannel shirt and a pair of jeans, and formal men's wear is a clean flannel shirt and new jeans. You'll see women in everything from Dress for Success suits to Refugee from Woodstock Nation tiedye.

[merrily]

31. Speaking of "merely because they say things that we like,"

does that apply only to the left? Or does it include New Democrats, as well?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. She is stating the all too obvious. K&R

[Ichingcarpenter]

4. I know

and its sad that the truth won't set us free
with the political system processes we have.

I did like the swipe on Clinton

[TheNutcracker]

3. GO BERNIE!!!

[colsohlibgal]

7. I'm So With Her

Just one difference, I'm pretty much with Bernie on Foreign Policy.

I'd love to see a band of truly progressive, voices do a road show all over this nation. My dream team would be Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, and the woman with a great name and voice, Zephyr Teachout. She is so well spoken, quick, engaging, and smart as a whip. Oh and maybe author David DeGraw, who has a new book out proposing a guaranteed base income for each adult - an idea FDR was looking to introduce post WWII -sadly of course he died before the war was finished.

Speaking of the Roosevelts, rich clans like them, the Kennedys, and even the Rockefellers these days, I applaud them for possessing empathy, the antonym for what people like the Kochs and Waltons display. Do unto others......that message sure doesn't resonate on the right, even the Holy Roller right.

[cascadiance]

9. I so much like what Kshama is saying, but the mechanics of the two party system we have now...

... preclude him I think from running as an independent in 2016, until we have something like Instant Runoff Voting at the national level in place. I think Bernie is well aware of this, and doesn't want to be pushed aside and demonized the way Ralph Nader has been for trying to do the same thing earlier.

The Tea Party wouldn't have gone anywhere without going to lengths to try and take over the Republican Party. They also knew that doing so as a separate party would just split the Republican base of voters and have more people lose than win.

Bernie can "mechanically" run as a Democrat, and also ensure he runs as one saying that he IS running in the tradition of OLDER Democrats like FDR, etc. who have challenged corporate power instead of the "new Democrats" that have embraced it and being accountable to corporate power instead of the people. I think if he phrases it that he's not loyal to what the Democratic Party has become in terms of many of its members and a lot of what it has done recently that he disagrees with, but that he's for *CORE* Democratic Party principles that had lead him to be an independent in the past when the Democratic Party had "lost its path" in its embrace of corporate power with the DLC and subsequent Third Way TUMOROUS INFECTIONS that plague it now, he will win over many Democrats that have become disillusioned with what the party has become in recent years.

Following the rules to run in the primaries is the way to either win himself, or at least steer the discussion towards traditional Democratic Party values, which is what he's said all along.

I say more power to those who in different locales like Bernie and Kshama have in winning as a third party candidate, but the system is rigged against them for the most part these days. We need to get some of them to help take over the Democratic Party to change the rules so that something like Instant Runoff Voting will make it hard or impossible for so-called "free" speech money can't buy off the "field" (of two parties which is all that is necessary now).

Get local party resolutions to at least ask to consider this kind of voting, which is what I just did locally and is being voted on shortly where I am now. We need to keep building from the ground up!

[cali]

10. I disagree. He will be completely marginalized if he runs as an Independent.

[3rdwaydem]

19. It would be a disaster if he ran as an Independent

because it would likely take away enough votes from Hillary to ensure a Republican victory. Oh and yes, Hillary will be the nominee.

[cali]

20. I don't know that it would do that. And I don't think it's written in stone that Hillary will

be the nominee. She really isn't very good at this running for President thing. Given a viable alternative- not Bernie- I think democrats will desert her in droves. History, it's not just for breakfast anymore.

[3rdwaydem]

22. It's a free country and you are free to kid yourself

It is set in stone but feel free to dream away if that floats your boat.

[cali]

23. lol. I don't think you have a clue as to what "set in stone" is

you want a coronation, not a democratic process. And guess what? People said precisely the same thing last go around.

History, learn some. or at least try.

[3rdwaydem]

24. A democratic coronation

Which means that the overwhelming majority of Democrats will back Hillary and a few malcontents will be throwing darts from the peanut gallery. In the end, the Democratic Party will be unified and ready for a landslide victory in November 2016.

[cali]

25. that's familiar.

and if hill is nominated- and she well may be- I don't think there is any guarantee that she'll be elected. Depends who the repub nominee is.

President Obama said she was likeable enough. She's not. And she makes goof after goof- all increasing the perception that she's opportunistic and arrogant- and that she's not for the average person.

we'll see. oh and 3rd way "democrats"?

Eww.

[Jim Lane]

11. Brilliant! We'll assume that the entire U.S. electorate is like Seattle!

Like all the third-party enthusiasts, she's ignoring the availability of primaries and caucuses. There's no requirement that a candidate be "tied to the Democrats and their big business agenda." The party honchos would oppose a Sanders candidacy, but they can't keep him out.

If the left-wing campaign she envisions could attract the millions of votes needed to win the general election, then it could attract the millions of votes needed to win the Democratic nomination.

You say that the big-money donors would squelch any such campaign within the party? Well, guess what, they're allowed to donate in the general, too. One difference is that the Democratic nominee in the general has the option of taking millions of dollars in public financing, an option not available to an independent or third-party candidate. An even more important difference is the party loyalty of millions of voters, who'll vote for the Democrat in the general even if they're closer ideologically to a minor candidate.

[liberal_at_heart]

15. which is exactly why nothing ever changes. We will only see change when the two

untouchable all powerful parties are shown through third party support that they must change.

[Jim Lane]

16. I see no evidence of that.

To take the most recent example, did Nader's multiple candidacies, peaking at 2.74% of the popular vote in 2000, show the two major parties (which combined for 96.25%) that they had to change?

Ross Perot far outpolled Nader, but I don't see any lasting impact from his candidacies.

There's no plausible scenario in which there are enough third-party votes to induce a major party to change in some future election, and yet there aren't enough votes to effect that change in this election by winning the primary.

[liberal_at_heart]

17. Again, that is exactly why nothing changes. Eventually wages will be suppressed to the point

where enough people will be displeased with both parties. I will openly admit that I don't know when this will happen, but I will say this. History repeats itself over and over and over again. When the rich hoard all the money, and the people begin to die from starvation things change. We have not hit the tipping point yet, but I have no doubt we will someday. Then we will have true change.

[merrily]

30. "Then we will have true change." Or not. Or a temporary one.

We have had significant changes when the oligarchs are frightened of an uprising. IMO, that was the motive for the New Deal and the Great Society. But, it has not lasted. When the fear dissipates, the changes get taken back, a huge exception being Social Security--and that has seen attack from both Republicans and New Democrats.

Outright repeal is not the only way to backpedal.

But, the oligarchs have much more reason to be much less afraid since 911. Laws that define "terrorist" very broadly, a public that quakes at the words "terrorist attack" and worships the military and first responders, militarization of state and local police, Homeland Security in all major cities, etc.

[merrily]

27. If you saw no effect on Bill Clinton from Perot's run, you

were not looking.

As for lasting change from Perot's candidacy, he was a billionaire willing to expend his personal fortune on his run. Not many people fit that description. Most people that wealthy seem to prefer to buy candidates, ala the Koch's. So, Perot could be written off as a "one of."

But there was at least one result from third party candidacies: Republicans and Democrats joined to make it even harder for third party challengers. i.e., joined forces for less democracy, with a small d.

As your post suggested, apart from Perot, we have seen only very small results from third party challengers in modern times. So, you haven't seen evidence of either proposition.

If a threat as large as Perot's manifests in more than a single election, from a candidate that is not sui generis, you can say validly that you've not seen evidence that the parties will change, for better or worse, after a serious threat from a leftist third party or a rightist third party. Until then, a statement that you've seen no evidence of how the largest two political parties react to a serious third party threat is not meaningful.

[Jim Lane]

28. I've definitely seen the effects of the primaries.

Your argument is that we "haven't seen evidence of either proposition" about third parties because there haven't been enough serious third-party threats. Throughout this thread, I've been stressing the availability of primaries -- and regardless of what you think about the track record of third parties, the power of the primaries is clear. This has been best understood by the right wing, which largely disdains the Constitution Party and instead works within the Republican Party. The result is that some incumbents deemed too moderate have been ousted by more conservative challengers, and other incumbents have scurried rightward in the hope of avoiding a similar fate.

It's also happened (to a lesser extent) in the Democratic Party. When progressives complain about how the party establishment shuts them out, the race I always think of is Carol Moseley Braun's challenge to Alan Dixon. Dixon was the incumbent Senator, backed by the party establishment. To the dismay of many progressives, the other Senator from Illinois, Paul Simon, joined with the rest of the Democratic Party leadership in backing Dixon, even though Moseley Braun was clearly closer to Simon ideologically. Despite all this, Moseley Braun hit on the tactic of getting more votes from people who agreed with her on the issues. She thus became the Democratic nominee and won the seat.

I agree with you that there are systemic obstacles to a third party (although only some of those are the doing of the major parties; some are inherent, such as the inertia of millions of voters who will strongly tend to support the major party with which they identify). That only strengthens my point about the primaries, though. It's impossible to conceive of "a serious threat from a leftist third party" that wouldn't have had a greater chance of success as a movement within the Democratic Party.

[merrily]

29. I didn't realize primaries was the subject of the post to which I replied.

It's impossible to conceive of "a serious threat from a leftist third party" that wouldn't have had a greater chance of success as a movement within the Democratic Party.

Not impossible at all.

[cascadiance]

33. Perot has left a message of broader bipartisan support to fight so-called "free trade" deals...

... like NAFTA, which was a big part of his campaign then, that provided many of his voters against both Clinton and Bush who both supported NAFTA, which many people look back on and say HE WAS FRICKING RIGHT!!!!

Now, I don't think just his proper position was enough for people to want him to be a president for every other responsibility that a president has, but it did serve to show support for positions on issues outside the views of both parties that could potentially unify America against corporatist control!

If we had instant runoff voting then, he might have had even more support than he got, as people would feel less concerned about the worse of the other "two evils" winning had that been in place.

Until we have instant runoff voting, new parties divergent from the mainstream corporate control of both parties will have to work within one of these two parties to get political power and people elected. Has already happened with the Tea Party within the Republican Party, and I think Bernie would be doing the right thing by doing another similar effort within the Democratic Party. I think he could really help take some control away from the third way mantra crap we have within the party now, as many, not just leftists will support his more populist views, especially with things like "free trade" crap like the TPP, which Ross Perot showed us when he ran can reach across party lines for support against the 1% control mongers.

[liberal_at_heart]

14. She makes me so proud to live anywhere near Seattle. I wish I did live in Seattle so I could

have voted for her.

[TheNutcracker]

21. I want someone to vote for, I want to be able to vote for Bernie Sanders.

[merrily]

26. One word: funding.